I’ll tell you the funniest story from my undergraduate years at a University to Remain Anonymous. One morning I was abed and the phone rang and after a long while I answered it, snarling, and it was a friend of mine in another dormitory.
‘You hafta help me,’ he said, tensely.
‘It’s only noon. Go away.’
‘I really need your help.’
‘No. Go away.’
‘Please.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m sewing my bear suit,’ he said, ‘which is really laborious, this is my bear suit for the Costume Ball tonight, and it’s a hell of a good suit, but I really should have been working on it for a few days before today, which I didn’t, which was a mistake, because the design is remarkable, this is absolutely the greatest bear suit you ever saw, this suit would make you proud if you were a bear, I mean I really worked on this, I studied bear musculature and all, how their fur rolls over their shoulders, you know, which is really fascinating, and how the claws emerge from sockets in the paws and feet, and believe you me that was a real engineering coup to design retractable claws, but the problem right now this minute this morning is that it’s a hell of a lot of work, and another problem, an additional problem, is that I was worried about my concentration lapsing, so I took some … medicine, and now I’m all rattled and I need your help.’
‘No. Call someone else.’
‘I did call three other guys but they won’t answer their phones.’
‘OK.’
‘Don’t even get dressed,’ said my friend, tersely. ‘Just put shorts on and run.’
My friend was a really bright guy, and as generous as the day is long, and deviously funny, and I should say that today, many years after the event I am reporting here for the first time in public, he is a successful businessman, worth many dollars, a pillar of the community, a chieftain of the clan, but at that time, the day of the Costume Ball long ago, he was not at all a pillar of the community, by no stretch of the imagination could that be said, and when I arrived at his room in the other hall he was one very addled bear. He was wearing the bear head, which was a remarkable head, incredibly accurate and detailed, pretty much the greatest bear head I ever saw, but otherwise he